Tagged: shane macgowan

I’m happy that I’ve travelled about a fair bit in my life so far (and successfully managed to dwindle away any money I have ever saved). I’ve seen a lot of Europe and some of India – on a stretched budget – but I’ve still got the itch.

Some of those closest to me are sort of under the impression that I am ‘settling down’, especially since my boyfriend and I adopted our mad little feline friend. I love cats and they make my life complete. (Yeah, I can deal with that.) It doesn’t mean I’m ready to pop one out and start learning to bake. No offense to those who like baking.

So, I still have some radical expeditions in mind for the future…

Extreme Camping. I’m an experienced camper, when it revolves around music festivals (including the mud bath which was Bestival 2008 when I think my actual bones gone wet), but I have yet to take the concept to a new high, as in, TREETOP camping, rather than being high in the usual, festival sense. High Ropes Forest in Germany looks like a pretty unreal place to try this…

I am slightly concerned about how the whole going to the toilet thing works, but look at the view.

Take the Trans-Siberian Railway. There’s something fascinating about Russia and the far East, and also something scary and alien to a westerner like me. People from these parts of the world don’t seem to smile much. I only guess this from when I worked at a heritage site & museum in London, where I noticed that certain cultures only pose for photographs with dead pan looks on their face. Anyway, I quite like being scared and I love travelling by train.

You can see landscapes that you could never normally encounter on foot or on road. This is the most famous train journey in the world, spanning 12 regions and 87 cities. The mountains, forests and the architecture to be seen on this trip are awesome, and I’d like to see for real the stuff of inspiration for that old literary genius, Tolstoy.

The classic American road trip. From San Francisco to San Diego you can drive along the Pacific coastline, stopping along the way when you feel like it and eating a shed load of Mexican food.

HELLO, Los Angeles. Obviously there’s Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Sunset Boulevard. A good area to stay in looks like Silver Lake, which is supposedly the more diverse and hipster part of LA, with a big music scene. El Coyote is meant to be the best Mexican Cafe in LA, and I intend to go…

The plan would then be to drive cross-country to eventually fly home from NYC. There are some incredible natural wonders in the Arizona desert, aside from the Grand Canyon. Visiting the wave formation in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument looks like it would be a truly psychedelic experience…

Visit Rio Tinto, Spain. So far, the closest I’ve come to Spain is a week long party in Ibiza. I have already planned to go to Spain again, as my boyfriend has a friend living in Seville, in the south, which is not too far from Rio Tinto (Red River). The place looks out of this world, lunar in fact…

The 62 mile long river runs red, partly thought to be due to pollution from 1000s of years of mining of gold, copper and silver there.

And lastly…

Get wasted in Dublin. I know this one is pretty crude but I once met some Irish blokes whilst travelling in Eastern Europe and was fascinated at their sheer, irresponsible dedication to drinking. They had some stupid techniques for getting hammered, like downing copious numbers of alco-pops with a straw in the side (I hate alco-pops). I’m assuming it was ’cause they were Irish, but in retrospect I think they were just chavs.

I’m in to the idea of being in a pub where local drinkers spontaneously break into old folk songs as I sit by the fire and wipe off my Guinness froth moustache. (Google ‘Guinness moustache’ images it’s quite funny.)

Ideally, it’d be around Christmas time and I’d be dragged up to sit on the bar to sing a duet with this handsome fella…